Writely for Class Collaboration

In my python class, we have a group project that will basically be our homework for the rest of the quarter. Our first assignment, or deliverable, is to provide the design documentation. There are three of us in the group. Since I use Writely for taking class notes, I couldn’t resist asking my group if we could use it to collaborate. Fortunately, they agreed.

It’s been pretty cool using Writely. We can edit the same file, even simultaneously, without having to deal with the hassles before Writely, like only having one maintainer of the doc, or passing around the files in email attachments.

When people say that Writely is a (wannabe) Word killer, I don’t think it’s the correct assessment. They are two different applications that address certain needs. Word is much more feature rich. Writely is great for collaborating over the internet. It’s not just useful for groups of people, but for individuals who want access to their documents regardless of which of their numerous computers they are on. I even upload my homework assignments to Writely (my instructor provides Word versions of our assignments for download) so I can read them on any computer, instead of looking around for the hard copy, which I don’t have with me most of the time.